Red Steel
by 004MOG
Summary: This is what happens when Phoenix accidentally finds Maya's Steel Samurai smut stash. (written for the kink meme, March 2017)


Maya leaned forward in her seat. Oh, this was getting too good.

 _The Evil Magistrate leaned his head into the Steel Samurai's touch. "I never knew...you wanted me all this time?"_

 _"If only I could have told you sooner... Think of all the time we lost to fighting each other! I..." His heart ached with the knowledge, the sentence unfinished. At a loss for words, he simply ran his thumb along the Magistrate's cheek._

The sun had been insistent on setting before Maya could be bothered to get up and turn on any lights, meaning the only thing visible in Nick's office was the keyboard of Maya's laptop. At times like these, nothing was more important, more absorbing, than the several tabs and windows she had open-AO3, the Steel Samurai Kink Meme's anon_press, a prompt she was in the middle of commentboxing, her meticulously sorted Bookmarks collection, and this here glorious piece of work-Pining!Steel plus a slow burn was just the absolute best! The last two hours of buildup had been absolutely worth skipping dinner and ruining her eyesight (blah blah blah something something staring at a computer screen in a dark room is bad for you, _supposedly_ ). This moment was the reason that the author had noted "Rating may go up!" in the earlier chapters!

Maya resized the window and opened a JPEG of one of her favorite smutty fanarts to sit beside it. She smiled. This would be a great companion to eye while she continued reading.

She was just getting to the part where the Evil Magistrate had taken the Steel Samurai's thumb into his mouth (yum!) when Maya's stomach gave an angry growl. Ugh! It's true she had done a great job of ignoring her hunger so far...a testament to how great this fic was, considering how out of character it was for her to prioritize literally ANYTHING over food. She scowled. This wasn't the greatest stopping point, but the smexytimes hadn't officially started yet, so maybe it wasn't so bad.

Maya didn't dare interrupt her reading session with something as tedious as cooking, so she planned on getting the quickest option available-Eldoon's, naturally! Maya made sure she had her phone and some cash in her pockets. She left her laptop open on Nick's desk. She'd be back in no time at all, of course.

* * *

Phoenix removed his keys from the lock, nudged the door open, and reached for the light switch. Before he could flick it, though, something caught his eye. Something was here that shouldn't be.

His muscles tensed. Phoenix made no noise as he crept along the carpet, grabbing an award trophy of Trucy's in case he needed a makeshift weapon, poking his head through the doorway of the room containing his desk.

Phoenix spotted the source of the inconsistency easily and immediately. He could recognize the collectible stickers decorating the lid of Maya's old beat-up Macbook even in the darkness. He smiled. She must have dropped by earlier and forgotten to take it home with her. He'd close the lid to save her battery, then shoot her a phone call to let her know he was keeping it safe.

Phoenix rounded the desk and was caught stiffly in his tracks.

He didn't know what he had expected to see, but it was definitely _not_ a full-color ink of the Evil Magistrate on all fours, nude but for his mask, the Steel Samurai behind him buried to the hilt-and not with his Samurai Spear, either.

Phoenix shook his head to clear it. He knew Maya loved the Steel Samurai, and she was more than old enough to engage in whatever sort of content pleased her. It wasn't his thing (shouldn't lovers be able to look each other in the eye once in a while—how can you do that with the masks?), but if Maya liked it, he'd support her. Change of plans, then. Instead of calling her to explain she'd left behind her laptop, he'd respect her boundaries and pretend he'd never seen it at all.

He turned on his heel to leave but did a double-take and rammed his shin into the desk.

Massaging his stinging leg, Phoenix took a closer look at the screen. The words that he thought he saw were indeed there—clear, decisive, evident.

He kept reading.

The pain in his leg was nothing to the sensation of heat filling his body from head to toe, like a boiling teapot. The room was dark, but any observer would still have been able to tell that Phoenix was redder than he had ever been in his entire life.

Phoenix did, in fact, end up making one phone call that evening.

"Wright," the voice on the other end answered.

"Edgeworth. I'm going to be blunt."

"Go on, then."

"I would really like to know why you saw a need to write and share on the Internet a Steel Samurai fanfiction depicting an _unnecessarily detailed account of our first time together._ "


End file.
